The night was cool and dark, giving the illusion of privacy. They walked into the orchards, stopping under a navel orange tree scenting the air with its fragrant blossoms. But instead of smelling sweetness, Decker almost gagged on the cloying aroma.
Sammy immediately sat down. Jacob remained standing, leaning against the trunk, picking off bark. All of them shadowed, faces sketched in smudged charcoals. Obscure. That was good. It made it easier to talk.
Decker managed to speak quietly and calmly. “What he’d do?”
Sammy turned his face toward the waxing moon, the beams highlighting the boy’s nose and lips. “We went to his computer club, you know.”
Yes, Decker did know. He did know.
Sammy said, “There was this one time. I think it was a Thursday.” He looked at his brother.
“It was Thursday,” Jacob confirmed.
“Anyway,” Sammy said. “He kept us after everyone else had left…both of us.” He blew out air. “God, this was a long time ago…”
But Decker could tell that the kid remembered it as if it were an hour ago.
“Anyway, after all the big boys had left…” He chuckled. “Big boys…they must have been like ten. To me, they were big…anyway, Gilbert kept us late and said something like, ‘Now I’ll show you boys the good stuff.’”
He turned to his stepfather.
“He must have had a subscription to some online porn service—a subscription that the Yeshiva was paying for, ironies of ironies.” A pause. “He showed us a bunch of pornographic pictures…really explicit stuff. It gave him a…” Sammy swallowed. “It gave him a hard-on.”
With effort, Decker refrained from punching something. “Go on.”
“It really wasn’t all that bad.” Sammy brushed it off. “He just like grabbed his crotch and said something stupid like, ‘This is what it means to be a real man’—something stupid like that.”
The boy stopped talking. Decker asked, “And that was the only thing he did? Just grab his crotch and say something stupid?”
Sammy said, “Actually, he made us touch it.” He added quickly, “Over his pants.”
“Touch it over his pants.”
Sammy winced. “More like…you know…stroke it. But over his pants.”
Decker felt like throwing up. “Did he ejaculate?”
“Uh…yeah.” Sammy hugged his knees. “Although we didn’t realize what it was at the time. All of a sudden his groin got wet. He turned real serious and said something like ‘You bad boys—’”
Jacob interrupted. “‘Look what you bad boys’—”
“Yeah, that’s right. ‘Look what you bad boys made me do. You made me pee in my pants.’ And we kept thinking how’d we make him pee in his pants? I remember one time we were talking about it—Yonkie and me. And Yonkie said, ‘Why didn’t he just go to the bathroom?’ I kept wondering the same thing.”
Sammy bit his thumbnail.
“Then he told us to go to the washroom and wash our hands. That we shouldn’t go home smelling like pee—”
“I didn’t smell like pee,” Jacob said flatly.
“Oh yeah, get this!” Sammy began to rock. “He said something like, ‘Even though you boys were bad, I’m not going to tell your eema. So if you don’t say anything, I won’t either.’ And we thought, ‘Hey, great! Eema doesn’t have to know that we were bad.’”
He chuckled, but it was anything but merry.
“Actually, it was more…disgusting than traumatic. And then later on, when you learn all these prohibitions against homosexuality, and you realize what happened, you start wondering if you sinned…or if you’re gay because you touched a guy and made him come.”
Decker said, “You know, none of that is true.”
“Of course,” Sammy said. “But it takes a little while to sort it out. It really doesn’t bother me anymore. The guy was a pervert. I was a kid. And like I said, it was a long time ago.”
No one spoke.
Decker asked, “And you’re sure that’s all he did to you?”
“That was it.”
“You’re not holding back, Sam?” Decker asked. “It was just that one time?”
“Yep! After that, we made sure we went home with the big boys. And then when all the stuff at the yeshiva started happening, Eema pulled us out of the computer club. Gilbert must have given her the willies.”
The night became very still.
Decker asked, “And that was the only thing he did to you, Sammy?”
“Swear to God.”
He turned to Jacob, trying to catch the boy’s eye. “What about you, Yonkie? Was that the only thing he did to you?”
But Jacob wouldn’t look him in the face. Decker felt his head go light. He turned to Sammy, hoping to extract some hidden information, but the older teen shrugged ignorance. Blind with fury, Decker was trying to keep control. But it was getting harder and harder. “What did that son of a bitch do to you, Jacob?”
The teen didn’t answer.
Sammy said, “Maybe I should take a walk—”
“No, no…” Jacob rubbed his eyes. “It’s…you can…” He sighed as only one can do when burdened by life at such a young age. “There was…this one time.” He licked his lips and looked at his brother. “You were sick.”
Sammy inhaled sharply. “What happened?”
“He caught me…I mean physically restrained me…held my arm…so I couldn’t leave with the big boys.” His lower lip trembled. “He goosed me…hard. He squeezed my balls for kicks. It hurt like hell.”
Decker waited for more.
“That was it.” Jacob slammed his lips shut.
Decker asked, “Over your pants?”
Jacob shook his head. “No…it was…” He tried to catch his breath. “I was a real skinny kid. My pants kept falling down when I would run or jump around.” A breath. “Eema used to buy me jeans with elastic waistbands…only things that would stay on…. So he kinda slipped his hand…” He took a swipe at his eyes. “You ever notice that I always wear belts? And I keep them real tight?”
No one spoke.
Jacob said, “I kept struggling to break away. He just…laughed. He said to me…He said to me, ‘What’s wrong, Yonkelah? Afraid you’ll like it?’”
“Asshole!” Sammy muttered.
Jacob said, “I finally did break away. I told him I was going to tell Eema. Know what he said? God, what a shit he was! Excuse my language…”
He looked up, he looked at his toes, anywhere but at faces.
“He said, ‘If you tell your eema, she will die just like your abba did.’”
Jacob sniffed back tears, his complexion a ghastly white.
“Now I knew he was full of it. At seven, I knew people just didn’t die.”
Another sniff.
“But you gotta remember that all this strange stuff was happening…that Eema was already pretty freaked out. And then that guard was killed. And nobody explained anything to us. I mean, I was really scared.” He turned to Sammy. “You were scared, weren’t you?”
“Petrified.”
“I knew I should have said something to Eema, but…” The teen wiped his eyes. “Anyway, I didn’t wind up saying anything because he never did it again. And like Sammy said, Eema told us we didn’t have to go anymore.”
The boy leaned against the tree, hugging the trunk.
“It took me about a year to convince myself that Eema wasn’t going to die. Then she told us we were moving to New York.” He looked at his stepfather. “I really liked you. I didn’t want to leave you. You took away a lot of the pain from Abba. But also, there was another side…I was relieved to get out of that place! It held so many conflicting memories—Abba when he was well and Abba when he was sick. You and Eema…of course, Rabbi Schulman…I love him. But then there was him! Mostly, I don’t think about it. Then out of the blue, I get this image…it scares me. I feel like such a baby…you know, why can’t I get over it?”
A sigh and a shrug. Then nothing.
Decker tried to speak, but the words lodged somewhere in the back of his throat. At the time of the murder and rapes, he had been in sex crimes and juvey, considered a top cop with years of experience. He had talked to numerous children who had been abused—emotionally, physically, sexually. One of the key signs of disturbance in young children was sleep disruption.
Jacob’s night terrors.
Decker had seen them firsthand. Yet he chalked them off to anxiety from his father’s death even though Yitzchak had died two years earlier.
Suddenly it all made sense. Jacob’s friendly but detached manner, his quiet but secretive nature. Right before Decker’s eyes, if he had bothered to take off the blinders. He had known that the boys had had contact with a sexual deviant. He had known that Steve Gilbert, a pervert and rapist, had taught both of them computers. He had known this! He had fucking known this and never once had he questioned the boys about Gilbert’s behavior toward them.
Because at that time, he had been much, much more interested in Rina than in her two fatherless sons. All his attention had been focused on her. Even when he did spend time with her young sons, it was for the purpose of gaining brownie points with her. Always Rina, as he blatantly disregarded obvious signs of distress in a little seven-year-old boy. Even after witnessing Jacob’s sexual behavior yesterday—especially precocious for a kid raised in a religious home—he still didn’t put two and two together. Even the use of Jacob’s language:
I can’t talk if I know some kid out there is being raped.
Some kid. Not some girl! Some kid!
Any rookie cop could have done better.
If Decker had had just an iota of insight, had shown the least fraction of sensitivity that he had shown countless other unrelated children, he might have saved his own son—hell, both his sons—eight years of heartache and misery.
There wasn’t a hole big enough to bury Decker’s shame and guilt.
Jacob was talking to him.
Decker bit his lip. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you, Yonkie.”
“I asked if you were mad at me?”
Decker was speechless. Eventually, he mumbled out, “Am I mad at you?”
“Mad at me for not telling you?”
Decker blinked several times, holding back the tears. That was the last thing he wanted—sympathy from the boys. “No, son, I’m not mad at you. How could I be mad at…” He cleared his throat. “I’m mad at myself. I should have…”
He walked over to the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. Immediately, the boy leaned against his chest. Decker hugged him hard, as if the single embrace might right the wrongs. But that was impossible. Eight years of secrets and shame. They all had some distance to travel.
“I feel so damn lousy for you…” Decker regarded Sammy, sitting under the tree, his knees to his chest. Unnaturally silent. Where was the kid’s mouth when he needed it? “For both of you,” Decker said. “I just wish I would have…I…”
Sammy said, “You couldn’t have known.”
But he could have known. He should have known.
Jacob sighed in Decker’s arms. “Could have been worse. At least Sammy and I had each other.”
Sammy spoke softly. “You know, sometimes, I think about Gilbert…rotting away in prison. I remember him as being kind of a good-looking guy. So I think that maybe he’s getting gang raped…often.” He hugged his knees. “That makes me feel better.”
Jacob broke off from Decker’s embrace. “You can’t tell Eema anything.”
“I have no intention of telling Eema.”
Jacob looked calmer. But he was still very pale. He said, “I still want to do the suicide hot line. Are you going to help me out or what?”
“Tell me when you want to start.”
“This weekend.”
“It’s a deal.”
A high-pitched voice yelled out, “Daddeeee!”
Rina saying, “Peter? Boys?”
“Yeah, we’re here,” Decker shouted back. “Just catching some air.”
“I need to compose myself.” Jacob walked away.
Wordlessly, Sammy got up and followed. A moment later, Sammy put his arm around his brother. Jacob kept his hands in his pocket, but didn’t move away from his brother’s touch. Decker watched as the figures grew faint in the distance.
The boys were so damn different. Yet Decker rarely heard them have words, let alone fight. He often wondered why they got along so well. Now he understood. Theirs was a bond formed from sorrow, loneliness and secret taboos.
“Daddeeeee!” Hannah shouted. “C’mere,”
Rina called out loud, “It’s Marge, Peter. She says it’s important.”
Decker closed his eyes. “I’m coming.”
“Daddeeeeeee!” Hannah started running to him…such unabashed joy in seeing her father. To her, he was still a hero.
How long before he blew that image?